


Five Times Marco Reproduced in a Special Loristan Way, and One Time He Did It the Standard Way

by Island_of_Reil



Category: The Lost Prince - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Genre: 5+1 Things, Crack, Egg Laying, HOW IS LORISTAN FORMED, Implied Mpreg, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Reproductive Weirdness, Sex Education
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2014-01-08
Packaged: 2018-01-08 00:32:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1126244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loristans are very special people. They don’t produce children through anything so common and mundane as heterosexual fucking. (Well, okay, maybe that one time, they did.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Marco Reproduced in a Special Loristan Way, and One Time He Did It the Standard Way

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Most Fervently](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091825) by [halotolerant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant). 



### 1\. Just the Touch of a Hand

As Marco sat up in bed, his head spun and his stomach clenched. Fortunately, the chamberpot was on the floor right beside the bed, and he was able to snatch it up before he became violently ill. Afterward he set it back down, then sat on the edge of the bed for a long moment, breathing deeply and steadily, until the urge to dry-retch had subsided.

There was a knock at the door. “Your Highness? Are you all right?”

Marco managed a rather weak, “Yes, fine. Please come in.”

A manservant, himself no older than Marco’s seventeen years, walked in hesitantly. “Would you like me to empty the pot for you, Your Highness?”

“Please, Laszlo,” Marco muttered. “Thank you.”

The youth took up the befouled vessel and disappeared with it immediately. Marco felt his stomach twitch again. Perhaps he should have had Laszlo bring him a clean pot, or bid him leave the first one in the room for a while. But the threat of fresh nausea swiftly passed.

It reasserted itself as he sat at breakfast not long after.

“Eggs and sausage, my lords?” Lazarus inquired solicitously as he proffered the platter.

The Rat eyed the food longingly, if not as avariciously as once he might have. But it was Stefan’s prerogative as King to be served first, followed by Marco as Prince. So the Rat waited patiently while Lazarus forked a modest amount onto Stefan’s plate, until Stefan held up his hand and said, “That will suffice; thank you, Lazarus.” 

“Young Highness?” Lazarus asked.

Marco paled. “No, thank you, Lazarus; I shall stick with porridge this morning, no milk in it, please. Please, give the Rat my portion of sausage and eggs; he seems hungry enough to eat an entire hog and hen.”

The Rat quite ignored the jest, for he was worried. Marco, like his father, ate in moderation, but usually he did eat; it was not like him to reject most of a meal. That also worried Stefan, who asked, “Marco, what is ailing you?”

Marco wished he could lie and say that he was perfectly well, but both Stefan and the Rat, as well as Lazarus, would know it to be untrue and might then worry more than was necessary. So he replied, “I am not sure, sir. I woke up nauseated this morning. I am sorry to recount this at table, but I was quite sick. I thought I had gotten the nausea under control, but the smell of eggs seems to be reviving it.”

The Rat swallowed a mouthful of eggs, then frowned. “Perhaps you’ve some sort of grippe. There does seem to be something going about.” Stefan remained silent, though Marco noted his thoughtful frown.

The remainder of breakfast passed as it usually did, other than that Marco did not finish even half his porridge. As Lazarus cleared the dishes, Stefan said, “My dear son, would you join me in my study? I have a matter I would like to discuss with you in private.”

“Certainly, sir,” Marco said. His father being the King, and himself the Prince, such matters typically arose at least once daily.

Once they were ensconced in the Royal Study and seated in the deep leather armchairs facing one another, Stefan said, “Marco, I am not entirely sure that what I am about to posit is, in fact, what is happening, but I believe there is an excellent chance of it being so.”

Marco tilted his head inquiringly. “Has this something to do with the trade agreement with Camolitz?”

Stefan shook his head and smiled. “Ah, no. Nothing quite that mundane. No, I am referring to the cause of your gastric distress this morning.”

“And what do you think it might have been, Father?”

Stefan’s smile broadened. “I strongly suspect that you are pregnant.”

Marco stared at him. It was not like his father to make such a joke. “Father, are you all right?”

“Yes, Marco, I am perfectly all right. As are you, I am quite sure. However, I do believe there are some matters I should explain to you about how those of our ancient line reproduce.”

Marco hoped that he did, indeed, have a grippe, and that his resultant distress was causing auditory hallucinations. Or that, perhaps, he had been poisoned by a Jiardasian spy, and the toxin had both roiled his stomach and done things to his ability to comprehend other people’s words.

“How those of our line… reproduce? Are you implying that it is not in the usual way, a man lying with a woman and the woman conceiving a child of it?”

Stefan shook his head. “No, my darling. It is not in the usual way.”

Marco rubbed the heel of his hand absently against his forehead. Though he had been well trained out of such nervous movements since early boyhood, he found himself quite unable to remain still and placid in the wake of such a revelation.

“You see, Marco, our bloodline is a very special one. It is the males who conceive children, all of whom are, again, males.”

“Then who … begets the children?” Marco asked in bewilderment. “If that is the appropriate word.”

“It is as good a word as any. Ideally, Marco, a new King or Prince of Samavia is begotten by a person much beloved of the existing King or Prince, and who loves him in return, in a romantic manner. The word for such a beloved in Old Samavian is _smizmar_. Indeed, it is the presence of the _smizmar_ which precipitates the King or Prince going into what is called a ‘receptive state.’”

“In other words,” Marco said, “you are, in truth, my mother, sir, and my mother was my father?”

Stefan burst into laughter. “In very strict biological terms? That is getting somewhat at the truth of the matter, Marco. Your mother was my _smizmar_ , yes.”

“And mine is…?” Marco began. And then the answer struck him, even before his father leaned forward and said, softly but emphatically, “Your _smizmar_ , Marco, is Jeremy Ratcliffe.”

It wasn’t like Marco to stammer, any more than it was like him to give in to nervous tics. “But… but… the Rat and I have never… done anything that would cause…” He trailed off, aware he was blushing — yet a third thing unlike him to do.

His father chuckled. “Oh, conception among those of our blood does not require acts of the usual level of intimacy. When a King or Prince is in a receptive state, his skin becomes what the biologists call a ‘semi-permeable membrane.’ Meaning that genetic material may be passed through it. Through the skin of another, into his own.”

“So,” Marco said, hoping he did not sound _too_ much like an unlettered Samavian peasant who had just been told about Dr. Einstein’s strange new theory and commanded to repeat it word for word, “I am carrying the Rat’s child, which he begat by touching me, possibly in the most casual of ways. Do I have that correct, Father?”

Stefan drew a deep breath. “In theory, yes. In practice, however, anyone who has touched your bare skin with their own bare skin while you have been in this receptive state might have begotten the child. Man or woman.”

Marco lowered his face into his hands. “Father, have you any idea how many people I shake hands with in the course of a week, ungloved? Or how often a servant might accidentally touch my hand as he or she puts a requested object into it?”

“I do, Marco,” Stefan said reassuringly. “And I know just as well that you cannot be wearing gloves every hour of the day. Fortunately, the bond between a Samavian royal and his _smizmar_ runs very deep, so deep that questions of what is commonly termed ‘paternity’ are irrelevant. In other words, regardless of whose genetic material you have absorbed, the Rat, as your _smizmar_ , will be the child’s parent.”

   
A few hours later, Marco walked into the Royal Cloakroom, where the Rat was busy blacking Stefan’s boots. Despite there being a host of Palace servants to perform this lowly task, the Rat had insisted that he continue to do it, as a mark of his gratitude to the Loristans.

Hearing Marco’s footsteps, he turned slightly, his face creased with anxiety. “Is all well with you, Marco?”

Marco drew near to him, put his hand on the Rat’s shoulder, and smiled. “All is well, Rat. In fact, all is more than well. I suppose you are as unready to hear this as I was earlier this afternoon… but you are about to become a father.”

### 2\. A Brooding Young Man

“He won’t let me into his bedchamber, Lord Ratcliffe,” the manservant said, sounding rather worried. “And he hasn’t come out since yesterday morning.”

“He’ll let _me_ in, I’m sure,” the Rat said, and rapped smartly upon the door. “Marco?” he called out.

“Go away,” the Prince’s sullen voice came through the door.

The Rat sighed. “I will see to him, Laszlo,” he told the servant. Then he pushed the bedchamber door open, swung into the room on his crutches, and shut the door behind him.

Marco was sitting, his arms folded, on a chair that had been specially made for him, a chair with a deep depression in the seat. The Rat could see bits of straw, scraps of fabric, and feathers protruding out from between the surface of the seat and Marco’s trousers. It was rather evident to his nose that both Marco, whose hygiene was usually impeccable, and his clothes could have benefited from a wash.

“I _told_ you to go away, Rat,” Marco snapped.

“Don’t fret, Marco, I’m not going to pull you off the blasted egg.” The Rat sat on the edge of the bed, laid his crutches aside, and contemplated his liege and lover. “However, it _would_ be wise on your part to take some food, and to permit the servants to draw a bath for you.”

“I can’t,” Marco said firmly.

“Why not?” the Rat demanded.

“Because if I were to eat, I would eventually have to defecate, and that would mean I would have to get up off the egg. The same with bathing.”

The Rat did not reply at first. He had experienced a great many strange things in his five years with the Loristans, now the King and Prince of Samavia. So he had taken it in stride when Stefan told him that those of royal Samavian blood were all male and that they reproduced by laying a single large egg. And, after his initial startlement, he had been immensely proud when he learned that the intimacy he shared with Marco meant that he was, technically, the father of the unhatched child Marco was incubating.

He did, however, worry about Marco, whose self-denial could reach dangerous levels. He was glad that, at least, Marco was not plucking off bits of his own flesh to use as insulation for the egg.

“It’s not as if you need sit there till it hatches,” the Rat finally said. “It could be kept warm by other means. Didn’t Dr. Tesla give your father one of his electric heaters when he was awarded the Gold Ribbon for Samavian Inventors?”

Marco scoffed. “That outlandish contraption, with its great glowing coils? It would burn the Palace down. I wouldn’t allow it near myself, my father, my egg — or you, for that matter.”

“Then perhaps we could get a servant to sit on the egg for a bit?”

But Marco shook his head vigorously. “No. Nobody else may sit upon my son.”

 _Not even me?_ the Rat wondered, feeling a bit stung. But he suppressed the thought, as Marco was obviously not himself right now.

“The egg…” Marco began, then stopped, his expression sheepish. “This may sound odd, Rat, but I make little noises of encouragement to our unborn child. And he makes noises back, little noises that nobody else can hear. Those sounds tell me how he’s coming along, whether I should shift him to the center of the nest-well so that he gets more warmth, or I should place him on the periphery for a bit.”

Most Samavians would have simply nodded and smiled brightly, fearing that their Prince had quite lost his mind but not wishing to show him disrespect by even slightly implying it. But the Rat said in all earnestness, “I must confess, Marco, that is utterly charming. And I can better understand why you do not wish to rise from the chair.”

For the first time in several days, Marco smiled. The Rat leaned forward and took his hand, and Marco squeezed the Rat’s in grateful affection.

“My father told me that he went through much the same thing,” Marco said. “Although, if I am recalling his words correctly, the longest stretch of time he spent on the egg that contained me was two days, fifteen hours, twenty-five minutes, and twenty-two seconds.”

“Whereas you haven’t moved from that chair for almost exactly three days. If you were any broodier a Prince, Marco, I would suggest changing your name to Hamlet.”

This time Marco laughed out loud. And then he nearly jumped into the air.

“My God, Rat — I just felt something sharp in my bottom. He’s hatching!”

 _“Hatching!”_ The Rat grabbed his crutches and hauled himself to his feet, his eyes bright with excitement.

Marco raised himself off the chair and stood by the side of it, his legs a bit wobbly from not having borne his weight in nearly three days. For the next twenty minutes, he and the Rat watched in fascination as a sharp little point, which would later fall away from the nose beneath it, pecked away at the shell. Eventually the tiny head to which it belonged emerged, capped with thick, glossy black hair.

The Rat said, “Wait a moment, Marco.” He swung himself back to the door, opened it, and called down the corridor, “Laszlo!”

The manservant reappeared as if conjured out of thin air. “At your service, Lord Ratcliffe.”

“Laszlo, our new Prince has arrived. Would you be ever so kind to bring up a bowl of fresh cool water, and another bowl —” He looked back into the room at Marco. “Was it rolled oats and cornmeal?”

“Yes, with some water in the mix, as he has no teeth just yet,” Marco replied.

The Rat turned back to Laszlo. “A mixture of rolled oats, cornmeal, and water in another bowl. The percentages would respectively be forty, forty, and twenty.”

“I shall do so immediately,” Laszlo replied, and then smiled. “And please, my lord, convey my felicitations to His Royal Highness.”

### 3\. A Budding Concern

“Marco,” said the Rat, “what’s that on your arm?”

With a confused frown, Marco craned his neck around to peer at his right upper arm. It was bare, as he had rolled up his shirtsleeve before he and the Rat had begun their stroll through the Royal Gardens in the July sun. A lump had risen in the middle of it, with a vague roundness to it but mainly irregular in form. It was perhaps twice the size of a chickpea, and it was as brown as the rest of Marco’s flesh.

“I don’t know, Rat. This is the first time I’ve noticed it, and I am fairly sure it wasn’t there this morning.”

The Rat looked concerned. “Does it hurt?”

Marco touched the lump gingerly. “It does not. In fact, it does not seem to be sensible at all; I cannot feel my own touch upon it.”

“Perhaps you should have the Royal Physician look at it,” the Rat said.

“Perhaps I should,” Marco replied.

  
Marco shifted uneasily in one of the armchairs in the Royal Study. As a Prince of the Blood raised to the requisite standard of behavior, he did not evince impatience even when alone. Yet he could not repress a certain anxiety, nor could he concentrate on the bound leather volume on Samavian history that he had taken from the bookshelf in order to pass the time until Stefan arrived.

The Royal Physician, usually a jovial and relaxed man, had taken one look at the lump and grown solemn. “Your Highness,” he had said, “I believe this is something for your father, His Majesty, to explain to you. I shall make a report to him posthaste. If I might, I would respectfully recommend you await him in his study, as this is something he will most certainly wish to discuss with you immediately.”

That had been an hour before. An hour of wondering whether he might require chirurgerie, whether he might become disfigured, whether— He bit off the thought. Surely, if his life were in serious danger, the Royal Physician would have removed the growth right away, or summoned a chirurgeon to do so?

“Marco?”

Marco gave a start. “Father!”

Stefan’s face was serious, amused, and loving all at once. “It is not like you to jump at the sound of a voice, let alone my voice. Yet I can comprehend why you might. Let me reassure you first and foremost: Your health is perfectly fine. You are not in any peril whatsoever.”

That merely took the edge off Marco’s anxiety. “Then, sir, why would the Royal Physician have sobered at the sight of my arm, and why did he insist that I wait for you to provide me with an explanation?”

“Ah, my son,” Stefan said. “I have much to tell you. I probably should have told you a few years before. But, in truth, I did not think it would be necessary a few years yet.”

Marco found his worry eased by his father’s apparent lack thereof. At the same time, he found his confusion growing. If the lump were not dangerous, then why did it seem his father was about to commence a long, serious discussion of it? But he knew the only way he could resolve this confusion was to listen.

Stefan now sat facing Marco in the other armchair, his hands on his own knees. “You are seventeen years of age, Marco, and you have learned from some of the finest tutors in Europe. That would include the professor of biological sciences. Therefore, I will presume you know how most people reproduce.”

“Well, yes,” Marco said. “But… ‘most people’? I had thought there to be only one way.”

“And, for the vast majority of humanity, there is,” Stefan said. “However… Marco, our line, the Kings of Samavia, are not quite as other human beings are. Oh, assuredly, we breathe, we sleep, we eat, we eliminate, we bleed, we love, we die. But, in the arena of reproduction, we are radically different, in a way that has helped us preserve the integrity of our heritage down through the centuries.”

Marco had begun to feel light-headed. He had a feeling he would become even more so as Stefan’s explanation continued.

“Marco, I know that you have never spent much time outside of cities, other than when you and the Rat journeyed across the Continent with the news that the Lamp had been lighted. But, perhaps, you have seen a plant form buds on one of its branches — not a floral bud, but the bud of a new plant that will someday separate from its parent?”

“I have,” Marco said, “but what has this to do with the situation at hand?”

Stefan leaned forward in the armchair. “Marco, the growth on your upper arm is not unlike such buds. It will grow larger and larger over the next few weeks. Then it will separate from your flesh on its own… and you will have a son, and I a grandson.”

Marco sat back in the armchair, his eyes wide. He was not sure he could absorb that which his father had just relayed to him.

Stefan observed him calmly. “You will have questions for me, I am sure, just as I did for my own father,” he said. “Take your time, my son, in asking them, that I might answer them all completely.”

The first question was rather obvious.

“Sir… does this mean that … my mother was … not my mother, in truth?”

A profoundly sad look settled over Stefan’s face. “In all ways that matter, my late wife was very much your mother. She loved me, and I her. She was as bewildered as you are now when first I explained this matter to her. But she came to accept it, and after you were born — or, perhaps I should say, after you separated from me — she was as attentive to you, as affectionate with you, and as emotionally bound to you as would any natural mother be. And, perhaps,” Stefan chuckled, “there was an appeal for her in not having to endure pregnancy and childbirth.”

“But… I am not of her line at all, am I?” Marco asked slowly.

“No, Marco. You are not. You are entirely of my line, tracing back through my father, and his father before him, and all the Kings of Samavia, ever since the very first one, untold centuries ago.”

“What causes this to happen, Father?”

“By ‘causes,’ do you mean the physiological processes? While I have studied the natural sciences, Marco, just as you have, I am no scientist, and I cannot describe this phenomenon in terms of, say, hormones. In fact, among those who are not of our line, it is unknown to all but a few — as it should be, to ensure the preservation of our line and the security of Samavia — and therefore it has not been scientifically studied at all.”

“No, sir, I meant — why am I … budding now? Is it akin to puberty, in that it is inevitable by a certain age? Or is there an external cause?”

“Something of both, Marco,” Stefan said. “Yes, you would have budded in any event. However, it typically occurs around the age of twenty or twenty-one. You are quite precocious in this. And while, again, I cannot give you any definitive scientific explanation, I would posit that an externality has, indeed, precipitated your budding.”

“An ‘externality’?” Marco repeated. “And what would that be, Father?”

Stefan smiled and said, softly and emphatically, “Jeremy Ratcliffe.”

Marco made no reply. He stared, but not at his father; rather, into the spinning void in his own mind. Stefan waited patiently for his son to come to himself, focus his eyes upon him, and ask, “How would the Rat have anything to do with this? Not only do we apparently reproduce without the genetic contribution of another, the Rat—”

“—is male as well?” Stefan finished for Marco. “Because, my son, love appears to be a catalyst for this sort of budding, and it has long been obvious to me that you and young Ratcliffe love one another deeply. And, indeed, if the genetic contribution of another is not required, then the sex of such another person cannot matter much to that person’s role as as catalyst, can it?”

“But—” Marco lowered his head and placed it in his hands. Truly, this was too much to hear in the space of perhaps fifteen minutes. He had had no natural mother, he was growing his own progeny on his arm, and his father seemed to know more about his own heart than he himself did.

“Ah, Marco.” He heard the rustle of his father standing up from the leather chair, then felt a strong, warm hand on his shoulder. “I would usually not offer this to you, as you are capable of absorbing the most shocking news with equanimity, but… let me pour you a drink.”

Marco said nothing. He had never sought out drink as anything more than a civilized accompaniment to a meal, as it was considered in Samavia. It would not have occurred to him to ask his father for a glass. However, as he heard the sound of wine being decanted into a crystal tumbler, he realized that it was precisely what he needed at the moment.

Stefan handed him the glass. Marco drained half of it in nearly one swallow, barely registering the mellow sweetness of the vintage.

“Easy, my son. I meant for the wine to take the edge off your state of mind, not for you to make yourself too insensate to grasp what I am telling you.”

“I am sorry, Father,” Marco said, placing the glass onto the table next to him with a slightly tremulous hand. “But this is, indeed, an overwhelming revelation.” Another thought occurred to him. “Will the… growth just drop off me? Will there be a warning? Or might I possibly give birth, as it were, to my son in the middle of a state dinner?”

“Oh, it will become very obvious when it is time for your child to separate from you,” Stefan assured him. “In two weeks’ time the growth will be a full-sized human infant that looks very much like you, and I, did at that age, connected to you only by a small band of tissue. The tissue will begin to dissolve, a process which will take less than an hour. The infant will begin to cry, and thenceforth he can be cared for as one cares for any other infant. Other than that, of course, a wet nurse will need to be found for him, as he will not have a natural mother to put him at her own breast.”

Out of curiosity, Marco peered at his upper arm. He had since rolled down his sleeve and buttoned the cuff, as he would have felt underdressed in his father’s study otherwise. Now he undid the button once more and pushed the fabric back — and noted that the growth was considerably larger than it had been when the Rat first called it to his attention that morning.

“I suppose I am fortunate that this is happening in the summer,” he said. “I should think it wasteful to have a dozen or more shirts and jackets altered to accommodate something that will be gone in only two weeks.”

“Ah, Marco,” Stefan said with a chuckle. “I have, stored away in mothballs, two garments that have been handed down through all the lost generations of the Kings of Samavia. There are two of them so that one can be worn while the other is being laundered. They are paternity shirts, with extremely loose sleeves that will conceal nearly anything, including an infant. The sleeves can be buttoned at the elbow so that you need not cover your forearms in the heat. At the moment, your extant shirts will suffice. But within a day or two, when you are truly beginning to show, you will be grateful for this generous gift of our ancestors.”

They spent another hour together, father and son, discussing the more mundane aspects of child-rearing that even royals of unique biology must consider, as well as the legal details of declaring the Rat Marco’s Royal Consort. Then Marco rose from the armchair, bid his father good afternoon, and sought out the Rat once more.

The Rat was still in the Gardens, resting on his crutches. Marco watched him as he leaned forward carefully to trace a pale finger along the line of a late-blooming branch, and he smiled as the Rat gently touched each and every bud. It could only be, he thought, a good harbinger. 

### 4\. Fatherhood Looms on the Horizon

“You wished to speak with me, Father?” Marco asked as he stepped into the Royal Study.

“I did, Marco,” Stefan replied. “Please, have a seat.”

After Marco had settled himself into the armchair across from his father, Stefan leaned forward and said, “You may find this discussion to be premature, as you are only seventeen years of age. But it is an age at which you should begin to contemplate the continuation of the royal line.”

Marco blinked. “Sir. I am as yet unmarried, as yet unengaged. I have not even begun to court any particular lady with serious intentions. And to choose a Princess from the hordes of eager young women presented at court every week will be a time-consuming process requiring the utmost care.”

“In that last, I do not disagree with you at all, Marco. I am very glad we discovered in time that the one such young lady was actually Mrs. Karovna’s niece.” Marco shuddered at the mention of the wicked, if lovely, spy. Stefan continued: “But that process is not an urgent one. It can be completely, if you will forgive the expression, uncoupled from the matter of reproduction.”

“I do not understand, Father,” Marco said with a frown.

“Ah, my son. I probably should have told you this years ago. It requires a certain maturity to comprehend, though one can make a case that you would have been ready to hear of it five years ago when I took the throne.”

“I am listening, Father.”

Stefan sighed. “Where to begin. I suppose with the fact that our ancient lineage is not born of this earth, but of a distant planet.”

Marco stared blankly at his father.

“Sir?”

“I understand your disbelief, Marco. It is hard to credit as a fact at all, let alone accept as the truth of one’s ancestry. But, yes, those of our line hail from a planet, as yet undiscovered by terrestrial astronomers, called Galifroyovitch. And our line do not reproduce as normal human beings do, but are woven, as it were, from genetic material, in an invention that is known as a ‘Loom.’”

“So, Father,” Marco said, his expression and voice rather deadpan. “You mean to tell me that we are creatures from outer space, and that we do not reproduce sexually.”

“Yes, Marco. That is exactly what I am telling you.”

There was a moment of dead silence in the study. Then Marco rose with a sigh, walked over to the sidebar, and poured himself a glass of Schnapps with no soda water in it whatsoever.

“Marco,” his father said sternly. “I have warned you since childhood about the dangers of relying on intoxicating substances instead of self-control in the face of emotional strain.”

“You have, sir,” Marco replied sharply, keeping his back turned to his father as he topped off the glass. “This would be the first time in my life I have ever done so. Would you truly deny it to me, in the wake of this revelation? Because the alternative is to start laughing and to walk out of the study shaking my head.”

When Stefan did not reply to that, Marco asked in a more conciliatory tone, “Should I pour you a drink as well, Father?”

“No, thank you.” Stefan’s voice was curt. 

Marco knew he should feel ashamed to be speaking to his sire in this manner. At the moment, however, he could not spare the cognitive wherewithal to care. He returned to the armchair, drink in hand, and said, quite respectfully, “Please continue, sir.”

Stefan drew a deep breath, pointedly ignoring Marco’s drink, and said, “The Looms were necessary, for our ancestors had been cursed with sterility. They wrested control of Galifroyovitch from a matriarchy, whose last ruler did not go down without a fight. The curse was the final act of her reign. So the progenitor of our line, Rassilov, invented the Looms.”

Marco took a long pull of the Schnapps. “And where, Father, do these ‘Looms’ get the genetic material that is woven into a new Samavian Prince?” he asked, trying to keep his voice neutral and respectful.

“Each House of Galifroyovitch received its own Loom after Rassilov invented the device, and presumably each was encoded with the proper genetic information for the Family in question. All members of a Family produced in its Loom are genetically identical. Therefore, although I am your father in nearly every meaningful sense, in the biological sense we are more akin to cousins. In any event, there was a bureaucratic organization on Galifroyovitch that served as a central repository of all such genetic information.”

“You say ‘was,’” Marco said, his curiosity getting the better of his incredulity.

“Yes, ‘was.’ Galifroyovitch eventually froze over. The planet yet exists in … well, an astronomical realm other than our own universe. But, as it is now encased in ice, it can no longer sustain human life. 

“As the temperature began to plummet, each Family climbed into a spaceship invented by Rassilov and departed for a different new planet. The Fedorovitch landed on Earth, in what was not yet called Samavia, many millennia ago. We assimilated well enough to be taken as natives, yet we retained all the superhuman qualities of our inventive forefather, and we were eventually hailed as kings. Presumably the other Families of Galifroyovitch have similarly thrived on other planets.”

Marco finished his drink and placed the empty glass on the small table to the side of his armchair. “And so,” he said, “may I presume that each Family took its own Loom with it, in their spaceship?”

“You may indeed presume so,” Stefan replied.

“And where, sir, would our Family’s Loom still be?”

  
The climb halfway up the crag to the tiny stone church was, just as Marco had remembered, neither long nor arduous. The old priest who served in that church was yet alive, his face even more wizened than before, and he greeted Marco, the Rat, and Stefan as he had greeted the two boys five years before: kneeling, shouting, sobbing, and praying. Stefan calmly bid him rise and explained the purpose of their visit. 

Within the hour they were climbing upward yet again, on a path far more rugged and steep than the one leading up to the church. But now Marco had the long legs and the sturdy musculature of a grown man, the Rat had grown as well and now maneuvered expertly on his crutches, and Stefan remained quite hale for a man of middling years. The priest, though he leaned more heavily on his knotted staff now than he had when first Marco and the Rat met him, led the way without hesitation.

They reached the massive outcropping of rock within an hour and a half. The priest lifted his staff and, just as he had done five years before, struck the rock twice, paused, and struck it twice more. And, just as it had done five years before, with a great grinding sound the rock began to slowly turn, gradually revealing the dimly lit chasm in the earth.

The four made their way down the steep, narrow interior stairs, the only sounds those of boots landing on stone, or crutches or the staff scraping against it, and the echoes of both. The Rat brought up the rear; Marco led the way, with his father behind him and the priest trailing, so that they could catch him should he slip. But the old man’s feet moved as surely as Marco’s own did. 

At the bottom of the stairs they were once more greeted by the broad-shouldered, cautious-faced peasant who had opened the rock to them by working a lever. He held out to them his lit lantern; the priest, once again pronouncing blessings upon him, took it and led his three visitors forward into the chasm.

The longer they walked, and the better Marco’s eyes adjusted to the faint light cast by the lantern, the stronger grew his impression that they were not following the same path as before. In the second corridor they traversed, he did not perceive that the walls were made of weapons, only of cut rock. The flight of steps that connected the second corridor with the first had seemed subtly different as well. Even the great black door in front of which they finally stopped seemed not to be of the same shape and height as that which had concealed the Forgers of the Sword.

On the other side of this door was another immense cavern, but no men waited in it, and no altar stood at its rear. Rather, it was half-filled with a tall, wide object whose metallic surface approximated polished silver.

“Your Majesty,” said the priest, “when I met His Highness the Prince and the future Lord Ratcliffe for the first time, I said of your family resemblance: ‘It is, indeed, a strange thing that two of God’s creatures should be so alike. There is a purpose in it.’ I could have had no idea at the time how truly I spoke.”

Then he addressed Marco. “Your Highness, neither I nor the Forgers of the Sword knew of this particular cavern when I led you and Lord Ratcliffe here five years gone; it had been sealed up entirely. Shortly after the War of Restoration, His Majesty the King had it unsealed, then brought me here to reconsecrate it. He insisted I be the one to bless each newly Loomed Prince till God gathers me to His bosom. There is another priest, a younger one, who knows of this Loom and will take my place when I am gone. He is, as I am, sworn to secrecy.”

As the priest had been speaking, his words echoing throughout the cavern despite their softness, Marco had been stepping quietly, reverently, around the device, the Rat following him in equally awed silence. Both of them noted the flight of stairs that ran up its rear.

Stefan, who had been following them around the great object, said, “There is a door in the roof of the Loom. It permits a view of the device’s interior workings.”

“Is the Loom in operation at this moment?” Marco asked humbly. Ever since Stefan had suggested they all journey to the crag on the Jiardasian border, so that Marco could see the truth of his father’s claims for himself, guilt had begun to gnaw at Marco for having ever doubted Stefan in this matter. By the time he had made his reacquaintance with the old priest, the guilt had become staggering shame. Now, however, it was tempered by awe.

“It is always in operation, my dear son, for it produces new Fedorovitches on its own time, not on human time. I have not the expertise to understand the schedule by which it operates. Would you like to look through the roof door?”

“I very much should, Father,” Marco said, and meant every word.

“So would I,” said the Rat, his eyes wide.

The roof being somewhat narrow, and the priest already having seen the interior of the Loom, he remained standing on the floor of the cavern while Stefan and Marco ascended the rear stairway, the Rat following them. When they reached the door, Stefan crouched by it and gestured to Marco to do the same; the Rat stood on his crutches by the edge. Then Stefan lifted the latch and pulled back the door panel until it lay flush with the roof.

The interior of the Loom was filled with thousands upon thousands of intersecting strands. They shifted back and forth rhythmically, creating a low and almost melodic hum. Marco was reminded of a spider’s web, but these fibers did not seem quite as organized, as they did not form any discernible patterns. The atmosphere throughout the interior was full of steam, yet quite bright, like sun shining through morning mist. Some of the steam had consolidated into cloud-like layers, which simply floated in the air: a very thick and solid-seeming layer at the bottom of the interior, and a rather more porous-looking one closer to the top.

And there, amidst all the strands and mostly obscured by them, was—

“Father!” Marco shouted in sudden excitement. “The Loom is weaving a new Prince of Samavia!”

The Rat caught his breath. “A new Prince of Samavia!” he echoed softly.

The priest, standing below, raised his head of wild white hair and cried, “God be thanked!”

Stefan, alone of them, had fallen silent at the sight. Finally he said, a tremor of awe in his deep voice, “And so it is, Marco. Consider yourself even more blessed than you knew, for seldom are even the Kings of Samavia fortunate enough to see this miracle of life in progress.”

Marco watched the small head bob up and down among the fibers for several minutes. Then, in a hushed voice, he said, “Father, how long does it take to weave a new Prince?”

“It should take another several days,” Stefan replied softly. “And then, Marco, the priest will have him brought on the back of a fine white stallion to the Palace, and you shall be a father.”

“A _father,_ ” Marco whispered, as though he could not comprehend all that the word contained. Then he looked up at the Rat and said, “And you, Rat, will be his uncle and his godfather.”

A solitary tear of pride trickled down the Rat’s cheek. He shuffled sideways a bit that he could stand closer to his dearest friend. For several seconds, Marco tilted his head against the Rat’s knee, his eyes closed. Then he leaned forward once again and, with fascination, continued to watch the weaving of the cousin he would call his son.

### 5\. Doing What He Musth

“Chain him,” Stefan ordered.

 ** _“NO!”_** Marco bellowed.

Each of the four burly Palace Guards seized him by a wrist or ankle; even so, their combined strength was barely enough to restrain him. It took several minutes before they could clamp all the fetters onto him, at which point they all sprang back in self-preservation. Marco continued to howl and to yank at his chains; they rattled loudly, but he could not pull them loose so much as a quarter of an inch from the dungeon wall.

“My _God,_ Your Majesty, what on earth has befallen him?” panted the most senior of the Guards, staring in shock at the Prince who only the day before had been his usual civilized and pleasant self.

“He is going through musth,” Stefan replied.

“Musth!” the Guard exclaimed, quite forgetting himself. “I had read about that in a book about the ancient Kings of Samavia! I thought it was all a fairytale!”

“Sad to say, it is not,” Stefan said. “Do you see that black trickle down the side of his face, smell the odor of coal tar emanating from it? That is the signature of musth, along with the aggression. Unfortunately he must remain here for a week in isolation, so that he does not harm anyone else — or himself. May I please ask you all to depart? I must speak with him alone.”

The Senior Guard’s eyes narrowed. “Will you be all right, Your Majesty?”

“I will,” Stefan said. “I thank you for your concern, but those chains were specially made and embedded in the dungeon wall centuries ago for this purpose, and they are short enough that he will be unable to reach me.”

“Your Majesty,” the Senior Guard said deferentially. “If you do not mind, we will stand halfway down the corridor, so that you might have privacy but that we can respond in case … anything happens.”

“That is satisfactory,” Stefan said with a wave of his hand. The four Guards walked one by one out of the dungeon. The last one shut the door behind him as gently as possible, but it was heavy enough that still the soft thud echoed off the stone walls.

Marco had quieted a bit by now, but his muscles remained taut with rage, and his eyes gleamed with hatred at his father. Stefan, standing outside the range that the chains permitted Marco, regarded him with infinite sadness.

“Why are you doing this?” Marco growled.

“Because, my darling, you are not yourself.”

“I feel perfectly fine.”

“If you were feeling ‘perfectly fine’ you would not have attempted coitus with the muskmelon at breakfast this morning while exceeding the volume of a locomotive. I feared that Lazarus would have an apoplexy at the sight. Nor would you have thrown the melon at me afterward when I objected, then broken that silver platter over your knee.”

Marco ignored that. “So you mean to keep me chained here like a common criminal for a week?”

“Unfortunately, I have no other choice, Marco,” his father said softly. “You could easily injure or kill another person in this state. Or yourself, as I said to the guard. If you were to harm someone else, once you came out of the musth you would never forgive yourself. So, yes, you will remain here until it passes, without food or water, as such will prolong the musth.”

“Without food or water!?” Marco shouted, dragging on the chains again. “I will _die!_ ”

“No, you will live, my son.” Stefan paused. “As I did, when it happened to me. My own father would lock me in a stone cellar for the duration. However, I will ask the Royal Physician to shoot you with a dart containing a tranquilizer, as well as a strong tincture of willow bark to keep your temporal glands from paining you too much.”

“No! Father! **_FATHER!_** ” Marco bellowed again as the King of Samavia turned and left the dungeon.

  
Several hours later, Marco was lying on the straw pallet on the dungeon floor, which the length of his chains permitted him to do, when he heard a tentative knock.

“Come in,” he snarled, rubbing at the spot on his hip where the dart had struck him through his trousers.

The door creaked open, and he heard the familiar thump and drag of crutches. He looked up. The Rat’s face was even paler than usual, his pupils mere pinpricks at the centers of his eyes. 

The tranquilizer had taken the edge off the rage for which Marco could find no plausible cause, as well as sapped him of some of his energy and strength. Yet the sight of the Rat produced a sudden surge within him, a violent lust that would have would have knocked him off his feet had he not been lying down already. His reaction must have been perceptible to the Rat, who hesitated near the door and seemed to grow paler yet.

“You can come closer, Rat. I’ve been sedated.”

“‘Sedated’? But you’re still awake, Marco.”

Marco laughed bitterly as he sat up on the edge of the pallet. “Still awake but relatively harmless, at least until the tranquilizer wears off.”

“And… how long before that happens?” the Rat asked nervously.

“A good ten or twelve hours.”

The Rat paused for another few seconds before pushing ahead on his crutches. He stopped at the edge of the pallet, swung himself gracefully down upon it, and laid his crutches to the side. Then he put his arm around Marco — who pulled away sharply.

“Jem — _don’t._ ”

The Rat removed his arm with a quiet sigh. Underneath the riptide of hormones rushing through him, Marco felt a twinge of guilt. He didn’t want to hurt the Rat’s feelings. But neither did he want to— good God.

“Forgive me, Marco,” the Rat said, his voice soft and his tone neutral. “I confess, I don’t understand any of this, and I’m more than a little alarmed. But a chap doesn’t abandon his friends in their hours of need, and I thought to offer you consolation.”

After a few seconds of silence, Marco cautiously asked, “What did my father tell you, about this state I am in?”

“That if I were intent on seeing you, I should hear the details from you, not him.”

Marco put his head in his hands, making the chains at his wrists rattle. “Apparently, Rat, I am in the throes of something called ‘musth.’ Which is a sort of … heat.”

“As in _animal heat?_ ” the Rat asked incredulously.

“As in animal heat,” Marco confirmed. “Except that heat is for female animals. Musth is what male elephants go through.”

“Oh, dear,” the Rat said. “How does something like this happen to a man, rather than an elephant?”

“It’s something to do with our bloodline, my father said. In ancient days, rulers of various nations embodied the virtues of certain animals. Usually it was an animal native to a ruler’s land. But in the days of the Roman Republic, many centuries before Samavia was reckoned a nation, the Samavii tribe was allied with Rome, and its men fought alongside the Romans in the Alps. Hannibal’s elephants left a deep, deep impression on some of my distant ancestors, one of whom founded the line whence I spring.”

The Rat was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Well, I suppose that’s a reasonable explanation.” He leaned over and dabbled his fingertips in the streak of tarry exudate on Marco’s forehead. “And this substance is caused by your heat, too?”

“It is,” Marco said, closing his eyes. He felt the touch of the Rat’s hand as strongly as if the Rat had caressed a considerably more intimate part of him. Which was a scenario he could not seem to chase from his mind’s eye. He hoped to God that the tranquilizer would not suddenly give out under this assault on his senses.

“Marco, you’re shivering. Are you cold?”

 _“No!”_ Marco snapped, dreading the Rat’s arm around him again. “I…” He shook his head despondently. “I fear that if I tell you, you will be repulsed.” He laughed again, a little nervously this time. “Perhaps you will even flee back to England, wishing never to see or hear from me again.”

“Why would I ever do such a thing?” This time the Rat sounded unquestionably confused and hurt. “My life is here. I would _have_ no life if not for you and your father, and Lazarus too. What could you possibly tell me that would drive me from you forever?”

Marco turned his head and looked the Rat full in the face. He could have cried at the tenderness and solicitousness he saw there, except that between the musth and the tranquilizer he was quite unable to weep. He said, slowly and clearly, “I wish to copulate.”

One corner of the Rat’s mouth turned up. “Well, Marco, that _is_ the definition of ‘heat,’ isn’t it?”

The urge to turn his head away in shame was overwhelming, but Marco steeled himself so that his eyes did not even flicker away from those of the Rat.

“Usually, though, an animal in heat would copulate with an animal of the opposite sex. I would prefer, rather, to copulate with you.”

He’d expected the Rat to lose any bit of color he had left in his face. Instead, the Rat turned a rather appealing shade of pink and looked down at the floor.

“I must say, Marco, it is a thought that is… not without appeal for me.”

Marco shut his eyes and groaned loudly. The Rat looked up at him again, sharply.

“Marco, are you in pain?”

“No,” Marco grunted. “Anything but.” When he opened his eyes again, he noted that the Rat’s pupils had grown huge and that his lips were slightly parted.

“I… do have one question,” the Rat said tremulously. “If you experience a kind of heat, rather than… what most men experience, should you not take the opportunity to find yourself a woman who would bear a child for you? I would imagine that most Samavian girls would jump at the chance, regardless of the unusual circumstance.”

Marco took a deep breath. This would be the most difficult part.

“My father told me that our bloodline is unusual in yet one other respect: I am capable of impregnating either a woman or a man. There appears to even be precedent in centuries past for a King marrying a man, who then conceived the King’s child, and having him formally recognized as the Royal Consort.”

“Even if… such a man is a foreigner, and not whole of body?” the Rat whispered.

“Even if he is a foreigner, and not whole of body,” Marco whispered back. He paused, and then he focused his entire being on the Rat. “Jeremy Ratcliffe, will you love me, will you marry me, will you bear my child?”

The Rat was silent and still for a moment. Then he smiled with a radiance that, Marco thought, could have grown all the crops in Samavia for seven years.

“You had only to ask,” the Rat murmured before leaning over and touching his lips to Marco’s.

### 6\. Standard Time

“My beloved Samavians, I present to you: Prince Ivor the Third!”

Marco stepped out onto the balcony with the baby in his arms, then stood at the side of his father. Since ascending to the throne, Stefan had never put his arm around Marco in public, but he did so now. His subjects, who had gathered in Melzarr from all parts of Samavia, roared their approval until Marco’s ears rang with it. Miraculously, his new son slept through all of it.

“So young, and he already has the bearing and equanimity of a Prince of the Blood,” Stefan marveled later, lifting his grandson and planting a kiss on his forehead.

“What shall you call him for a private name?” the Rat asked.

“I should think we will not need one for him. His parentage need not be concealed, as was true for myself and Father,” Marco said. “We will simply call him ‘Ivor.’ Unless of course his mother has other ideas.”

“And how _does_ my daughter-in-law the Princess Ekaterina fare after her labors?” Stefan asked.

She is well, but tired, and she continues to rest,” Marco replied. “A first child is always the hardest, her nurse told me. How brave women are, to willingly endure the rigors of childbirth, and multiple times at that! I cannot imagine withstanding such an ordeal myself. In any event we must bring Ivor back to her before much longer, that she can hold and feed him.”

“Will he not have a wet nurse instead?” his father asked, with some surprise.

“In time, she will, but she prefers to feed him initially, as her mother and grandmother say it will be best for the both of them,” Marco replied.

Stefan shook his head. “Well, that is a woman’s concern and I shall not interfere. And now I must bid the three of you good day, as I have some matters of state to which I must attend.”

When Stefan had gone, Marco turned to the Rat and said, with a smile, “Rat, would you like to hold your new nephew?”

The Rat, deeply flattered at the implication that he was family to the new little Prince, gave a small laugh of surprise. “Of course I would, Marco.” He leaned forward in his chair and took the infant from Marco. “How does one—”

“—hold a baby? Just cradle him in your arms. Surely you’ve seen women, and men, do so many times before?”

The Rat did not reply, but he managed to make a cradle of his arms, and the child rested rather placidly therein.

“He looks very much like you, Marco, and your father too,” he said, his voice somewhat awed as he trailed a finger down the small soft brown cheek.

“He has a bit of his mother in his face, too, but, yes, he is unmistakably of our line,” Marco said, feeling his throat tighten with pride.

The Rat was quiet for a moment, staring into the eyes of little Ivor, whose own eyes roamed curiously around the room. Then he said, “This may sound very silly, Marco…”

“Oh, out with it,” Marco said, grinning. “Nothing you could tell me would ever sound silly.”

“Well,” the Rat said hesitantly, “this makes me wish I could give you a child myself, of my own body. I know it is ridiculous, men cannot create children with one another, and you know I think the world of Ekaterina. But… such a child would be part of you, and he, or maybe she, would be part of me as well.”

Then he looked up sheepishly at Marco. “Stupid, isn’t it?”

Marco smiled softly at him. “No, Jem. It isn’t stupid at all.”

He pulled his chair closer to the Rat’s, and he put his arm around his dearest friend. The Rat leaned his head against Marco as he continued to hold the newborn Prince in his arms. And there they all sat quietly for a while, a small circle of love, until little Ivor began to fuss for his mother.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by [Halotolerant](http://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant)’s wonderfully cracky Yuletide 2013 fic [“Most Fervently.”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1091825) Halotolerant was also the beta for this fic, and the concrit she provided was very helpful.
> 
> While I am not a fan of either _Doctor Who_ or _Futurama_ , I have some basic familiarity with both; and detailed information on, respectively, [Looms](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Loom) and [_smizmar_](http://theinfosphere.org/Smizmar) is readily available. I could not find a description of a Gallifreyan Loom online, so I pulled some descriptors from [this fanfic](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9475577/1/THE-HUMAN-S-GUIDE-TO-TIME-LORD-ANATOMY). You’ll note that in my story, Loomed Samavian royalty are not born with adult-sized bodies. Since Marco was a boy in canon, I thought it would be appropriate for the Fedorovitch Loom to produce “true children” instead.
> 
> I brushed up on my knowledge of budding at [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budding). WP’s [article on broodiness in chickens](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broodiness), as well as [this post](http://www.hobbyfarms.com/livestock-and-pets/broodiness-in-chickens.aspx), gave me the information I needed to write “A Brooding Young Man.” And the musth vignette was inspired by [Leloi’s _BBC Sherlock_ A/B/O fic “Musth,”](http://archiveofourown.org/works/938839) with supplemental details again from [WP](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musth).


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